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Curious About Small Business Loans

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Nancy Cawley and her three siblings have a real estate business in Braintree. It’s not doing well. When the bubble burst, pop went their profits.

“To put everything you had into a business and then to have nothing to show for it,” says an emotional Cawley.

Her company, Partners Investment Properties has lost money for two straight years. She says she needs money to make money. Bottom line, she could use a loan. “We’re taking money out of retirement and also borrowing from credit cards.”

As the government spends billions to bail out big business, Cawley wonders when it’ll do more than just praise the little guy.

“It’s not right that I should lose it all because our government and Wall Street ate all the cookies in the cookie jar.”

So what is the government doing?

A little more than a year ago, the president signed the Recovery Act. As part of that, the Small Business Administration (SBA) was able to turn to banks and guarantee loans to small businesses by 90 to 100 percent.

The SBA also got rid of loan fees that cost businesses thousands.

Robert Nelson, the Massachusetts Director for the SBA told WBZ, “We’ve done a phenomenal job of getting access to capital, jumpstarting the economy and getting banks to start lending again.”

Cawley’s response? The SBA is offering all that, but “not to the small businesses that really needs the help.”

You see, to qualify for a government guaranteed loan, you need to have turned a profit in at least one of the past two years. “If they can’t show repayment ability, they will have a hard time getting capital,” says the SBA.

And so, with no loans from the government, Nancy and her family hope for the best assistance of all a better housing market.